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Nicaragua: The Frequent Denial of Medical Care as Torture

The Death of Brooklyn Rivera and other Political Prisoners

The denial of access to specialized medical care is a punitive practice—not only a method of torture, but also a Crime Against Humanity.

By Uriel Pineda (Confidencial)

HAVANA TIMES — After months of pressure from the media and international human rights organizations, the regime led by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua released images of Indigenous leader Brooklyn Rivera in an agonizing condition, nearly three years after his detention. He died just days later. While Rivera’s death raises a presumption of unlawful death under the Minnesota Protocol, it may also reveal a previously overlooked pattern of torture.

One of the Ortega-Murillo regime’s principal tools of repression in Nicaragua is the arbitrary imprisonment of opponents, dissidents, and, more recently, even former collaborators of the regime for reasons that seem understandable only in Rosario Murillo’s mind. However, every one of these deprivations of liberty follows a common pattern: illegal detention, violations of due process, exceptional conditions........

© Havana Times